← Back to Reviews
in
#623 - The Man From Nowhere
Lee Jeong-beom, 2010
An enigmatic pawnbroker springs into action when the young daughter of his drug-addict neighbour is kidnapped by a vengeful criminal organisation.
The cover art on the DVD of The Man From Nowhere that I rented sported a presumably favourable critic's quote that attempted to sum it up as "Taken meets Oldboy". Now, seeing as I didn't particularly like Taken yet liked Oldboy, this did some admittedly complicated things to my confidence in the film itself. The Man From Nowhere certainly doesn't hold any pretense to the complicated mystery narrative of Park's film, but I suppose that its version of vengeful action is at least a bit more palatable than that of Morel's film. The plot is relatively easy to follow; after a prologue that sees a team of police officers attempt a drug bust in a nightclub that falls apart when one dancer unexpectedly steals the drugs, the action switches to a Léon-like narrative where a mysterious pawnbroker (Won Bin) forges an unlikely connection with a schoolgirl neighbour (who just so happens to be the daughter of the dancer who stole the drugs at the beginning of the film). When mother and daughter are abducted by the gang looking to recover its merchandise, Won slowly but surely gets wrapped up in the proceedings and his ability to respond against his criminal captors makes him the nominal hero who can do what the police can't.
The Man From Nowhere doesn't do anything overly original in terms of its revenge-driven action narrative. It skimps a fair bit on the action front for a good chunk of its considerable running time, though it at least allows for a strong enough bond to form between Won and his young charge so that you can understand him willing to shift out of his quiet life in order to rescue her. The rest of the cast fill some fairly unremarkable stock characters such as determined law enforcers and vicious underworld figures, though one at least gets some distinction by his dialogue being entirely in English (and, perhaps unsurprisingly, he is set up as one of the main threats to Won). The action is captured rather decently but it is not exactly mind-blowing so much as managing to be not horrible. What action there is gets used sparingly and tends to involve Won being able to fight off aggressors using a mix of martial arts, knives, and guns. It may be directed and captured rather decently, but it's still infrequent enough that referring to The Man From Nowhere as an action movie seems a little disingenuous. The same arguably goes for calling it a thriller as it does run through some scenarios that are only just discomforting enough to keep one from boredom without going overboard into exploitative disgust. To this end, I don't really see that much to truly love about The Man From Nowhere. There's certainly enough depth to the characterisation that I'm invested enough in how things turn out for the cast, but in doing so I have to put up with a fairly patchy plot that is only occasionally elevated by some decently-choreographed action.
Lee Jeong-beom, 2010
An enigmatic pawnbroker springs into action when the young daughter of his drug-addict neighbour is kidnapped by a vengeful criminal organisation.
The cover art on the DVD of The Man From Nowhere that I rented sported a presumably favourable critic's quote that attempted to sum it up as "Taken meets Oldboy". Now, seeing as I didn't particularly like Taken yet liked Oldboy, this did some admittedly complicated things to my confidence in the film itself. The Man From Nowhere certainly doesn't hold any pretense to the complicated mystery narrative of Park's film, but I suppose that its version of vengeful action is at least a bit more palatable than that of Morel's film. The plot is relatively easy to follow; after a prologue that sees a team of police officers attempt a drug bust in a nightclub that falls apart when one dancer unexpectedly steals the drugs, the action switches to a Léon-like narrative where a mysterious pawnbroker (Won Bin) forges an unlikely connection with a schoolgirl neighbour (who just so happens to be the daughter of the dancer who stole the drugs at the beginning of the film). When mother and daughter are abducted by the gang looking to recover its merchandise, Won slowly but surely gets wrapped up in the proceedings and his ability to respond against his criminal captors makes him the nominal hero who can do what the police can't.
The Man From Nowhere doesn't do anything overly original in terms of its revenge-driven action narrative. It skimps a fair bit on the action front for a good chunk of its considerable running time, though it at least allows for a strong enough bond to form between Won and his young charge so that you can understand him willing to shift out of his quiet life in order to rescue her. The rest of the cast fill some fairly unremarkable stock characters such as determined law enforcers and vicious underworld figures, though one at least gets some distinction by his dialogue being entirely in English (and, perhaps unsurprisingly, he is set up as one of the main threats to Won). The action is captured rather decently but it is not exactly mind-blowing so much as managing to be not horrible. What action there is gets used sparingly and tends to involve Won being able to fight off aggressors using a mix of martial arts, knives, and guns. It may be directed and captured rather decently, but it's still infrequent enough that referring to The Man From Nowhere as an action movie seems a little disingenuous. The same arguably goes for calling it a thriller as it does run through some scenarios that are only just discomforting enough to keep one from boredom without going overboard into exploitative disgust. To this end, I don't really see that much to truly love about The Man From Nowhere. There's certainly enough depth to the characterisation that I'm invested enough in how things turn out for the cast, but in doing so I have to put up with a fairly patchy plot that is only occasionally elevated by some decently-choreographed action.